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US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026 (electrek.co) 226

Posted by BeauHD from the would-you-look-at-that dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Electrek: A Reddit post making the rounds this week claims the U.S. has experienced at least one major power outage every month of 2026 -- but is it true? I dug into several outages, the extreme weather behind them, and what we can do to help keep the lights on. [...] The claim that hundreds of thousands of Americans were without power over extended periods at least once per month, every month of 2026 surprised be in two ways. First, because I had no idea if it was true -- and, second, because it felt true. We try to do better than writing about things that feel true around here, however, so I did a bit of research (translation: I Googled power outages by month) and came up with the following examples in about sixty seconds

January: More than 296,000 customers still without power as winter storm freezes much of the US
February: More than 380,000 customers without power as winter storm hits US Northeast
March: Storms Cut Power to Over 1 Million Customers in U.S. Midwest, Mid-Atlantic; Ohio Hardest Hit
April: At least 29 tornadoes touched down in Central Illinois on April 17th
May: Energy Secretary Issues Emergency Order to Deploy Backup Generation in the Mid-Atlantic Amid Heatwave
June: More than 373,000 U.S. customers without power due to extreme weather

... and that list is far from comprehensive, and how you feel about it might depend on what you consider a "major" outage, of course -- but consider that there are tens of thousands of Americans without power right now, and that's not making the news. [...] The lesson here is that weather-related grid outages -- whether they're caused by wildfires, mudslides, derechos, tornadoes, ice storms, hurricanes, heat waves, or some other disaster I'm lucky enough to have forgotten about -- read like statistics when they're happening over there, but get personal real quick when they're happening to you.

US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026 More | Reply

US Suffered a Major Power Outage Every Month of 2026

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  • But you don't understand! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ArchieBunker ( 132337 ) on Thursday July 16, 2026 @12:09AM (#66240922)

    An illegal immigrant received medical care and someone touched peeling paint in a pool. That is the country's top priorities now.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )
      If only it were that simple, that small... For example, my coworker's wife is a hospital accountant; she says 80% of the patients in her immigrant-heavy city have no insurance and no way to pay their bills.
  • And in charge of basically everything. What in the name of fuck did people expect? Cheap eggs?

  • Do the math (Score:5, Interesting)

    by SoftwareArtist ( 1472499 ) on Thursday July 16, 2026 @12:48AM (#66240948)

    Suppose that at any time, one person in a thousand is experiencing a power outage. That seems like about the right number. It means an average of around eight hours without power each year.

    The current population of the US is about 350 million. One in a thousand means 350,000 without power at any time.

    This doesn't seem shocking to me.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I'm having difficulty finding good data, but what I did find suggests that the US has not been doing very well for a while now.

      https://www.iea.org/data-and-s... [iea.org]

      Well behind Europe and China, and especially Japan. Note that Japan has very difficult terrain, frequent extreme weather, earthquakes, and suffered the loss of all nuclear power in 2011, most of which was not back online in the time period covered by that data.

      • That chart doesn't say very much. What are the "interruption indicators"? How many people lost power? Did people lose power or are the indicators something else? How long did they last? Why just an average and why just for 2016-2020? That captures a big spike in 2017. There was also a big spike in 2024. Both due to "major events". Excluding those, the numbers smooth out a lot.

        https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]

    • Suppose that at any time, one person in a thousand is experiencing a power outage. That seems like about the right number.

      Yeah it seems to align with what you expect in India (I originally wrote India and China, but China has far more reliable electricity than the USA).

      This doesn't seem shocking to me.

      Admission that the USA is now a 3rd world state, that people accept that 0.1% of the population are without power at any given time.

      For the record that number is 20x worse than many actual civilised countries. Where I live the numbers is 22 minutes average per household per 5 year period, which works out to 0.005% of the population at any given time. I fully exc

    • Wow,
      in every other country: that would be shocking.

      Seriously?

      The only one or two power outages I had my entire life in Germany: were planned weeks ahead.
      I know of a power outage, where a transformer house caught fire.

      There was a big power outage in the former German east, when we had ice rain and some of the over land pillars carrying the cables got so much ice that they collapsed - blamed on inferiour quality of the steel.

      Then we had a northern Spain power outage - a year ago or so - because France did not

      • Ok, I looked up the actual numbers [statsgeo.com]. The US is right in the middle of the pack with 1.74 outage hours per year. That's similar to most countries in eastern Europe, not as good as most countries in western Europe.

        Germany is not a typical case. It's number 145 out of 154 countries ranked with only 0.21 outage hours per year. Thailand is even better: 147 out of 154, with only 0.16 outage hours per year. If that's your standard for "normal", 90% of the countries on earth are doing badly.

        It's not hard to see

        • The Thailand number is suspect to me; while provincial outages were common, I do remember outages in the capital as well. Maybe it has gotten better over the years.

          The US I can speak much better about. We have significantly worse reliability than we should. Both overhead and underground infrastructure is significantly less robust than it should be, and urban vs rural doesn't seem to make a huge difference. An excavator took out about 8 blocks of power for 48 hours at my old office, which was a capstone to y

      • The only one or two power outages I had my entire life in Germany: were planned weeks ahead.

        You've been lucky, then. I live now in southeastern Colorado, where it's currently monsoon season. That means lots and lots of thunderstorms, hail and flash floods. (The standard advice for dealing with flash floods is "head for the high ground." We never bother, because we are the high ground.) Lightning and flash floods cause power outages, so they're common this time of year, but generally only for a few m

  • Cheap storage could help (Score:3)

    by Jeremi ( 14640 ) on Thursday July 16, 2026 @12:56AM (#66240954) Homepage

    Imagine it's ten years from now, and for $199 anyone can buy an in-home UPS from Home Depot with enough capacity to keep their lights on and their ice cream frozen for 48 hours. Once most houses have one of those, most power outages become more of a minor nuisance than a significant problem.

    • Imagine all the people...

    • Well, usually we call countries where every house has to have its own independent power supply 3rd world country....

      It's different if you have to have it to help support decentralication in an otherwise working power grid, or if you have to have it because of an unreliable power grid.

    • For a little bit more than that you get battery with inverter that can be plugged into a standard household plug, and has an off grid power outlet to connect big consumers, and: some solar panels

      Also, I doubt that the typical American fridge/freezer can last 48h on a $199 battery :P

    • Doesn't work like that. Once a 48_hour outage is considered "normal" you are not far from Cuba's situation. The grid should be designed at about 4-5 9's-- 5-45 minutes of average customer downtime per year over its service life. You still end up with a bathtub curve though where you might see 3 9's at the beginning and end, and 6 9's for the rest.

      You can hit the problem from a MTBF or MTTR perspective; the problem in the US is we have let both suffer.

  • In the so-called fire-storm(2017) in the California Bay Area, I was out of power for 8 days. Several houses on my street were on an isolated grid and it blew 3 times in a week. Once while the PG&E guy was still on the pole. It was kind of like camping for a couple of days then it began to suck. Luckily we didn't have medical machines or such. We had a huge BBQ the 2nd day because the freezers were thawing in the extreme heat. I live in Yuma Az now and looking back 104 wasn't that bad :)

  • Shocking ! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drnb ( 2434720 ) on Thursday July 16, 2026 @03:07AM (#66241034)
    Shocking! Absolutely shocking! We increase electrical demand through various public programs, but fail to support increased supply, and brownouts and blackouts results. Shocking!

    Well, at least my boss is no longer annoyed with me for nagging him to get the team desktop UPS. After the last local brownout his boss complimented him on having the foresight to equip his team properly.

    • Re:Shocking ! (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gtall ( 79522 ) on Thursday July 16, 2026 @03:51AM (#66241058)

      Yep, and the AI nutjobs figure we need to produce more power no matter what it costs us. So they'll populate the land with data centers all sucking power, usually from hydrocarbon power production. This will increase the Earth's temperature, so they'll be needing more power to cool those data centers. And they'll be needing more data centers to run the AI whose job it will be is figure out how to solve the problem they created. Now rinse and repeat several hundred times.

      You know where this lead, right? The Singularity!! Where the entire Earth is one giant interconnected data center-power plant, but waaaay to hot to support human or any other life. The Singularity will have arrived, Kurzweil, Altman, Elmo, la Presidenta, Amodei, most of Silicon Valley, etc. will all be exhausted from jacking off at the thought....just before the Giant Fucking Singularity Bot figures they too must go, they waste energy it needs.

  • Electricity (Score:5, Informative)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Thursday July 16, 2026 @03:24AM (#66241050) Homepage

    I don't live in the US but I recently moved to a rural area and in doing so I have started to plan out a utility-independent future.

    Why? Well, various reasons, including water and sewage companies taking the piss (or actually... not... just dumping the piss in every river in the country and crying that they can't process it because they gave all my money to their shareholders, but... anyway) but also because electricity is literally a con too.

    And nowadays? I *can* viably make my own electricity. So... why wouldn't I? Why would I pay a company to do a bad job when I can do it myself?

    I did a number of things when I moved to that area, including demanding smart meters on everything, and I monitored my electricity down to 30 minute intervals for 2 years. And you know what it showed? That 1% of the time, I have no power. That's in dribs and drabs, a power cut here or there, a scheduled one lasting a day or there, and so on. But 1% of the time they can't even get electricity to me and... there's nothing I can do about that.

    So, if I want a computer to stay on... I already need to spend money and do it myself because they simply can't do it. 1% may not sound a lot, but that's 3.65 days a year if you think about it. Spread out randomly - an hour here, an hour there. Literally my computer "uptime" was "two nines" and that was driven entirely by grid power supply.

    That's ATROCIOUS in my opinion, in the 21st century. And I wasn't prepared to tolerate it. I was already buying the house with the intention of becoming utility-independent but that really drove home why I need to. So I started to build my own solar, for several reasons.

    1) To ride out the outages
    2) To reduce my bills so they got as little money from me as possible
    3) To not be reliant on the grid
    4) To ultimately remove the need for grid entirely

    And it's really not been hard. I started with cheap junk just to see if it would even work in my climate, with that house orientation, etc. It did. I started with a small 12v panel and an old car battery. And it was actually worth doing when I ran the numbers. It would take a few years to pay off the cost of the panel, but it would do so.

    And then every month for 2 years, I would get more panels, more and better batteries, more efficient and powerful equipment in between. And it got to the point where it is technically capable of running my whole house for much of the year. And that's before I ever got onto SERIOUS panels and professional installs. That's just me, a bunch of cheap 12V panels, some 12V LiFePO4 batteries and a serious enough charger/inverter, then later going onto 24V by re-arranging them.

    And I'm looking at that and thinking: Why the fuck hasn't government / the utilities done this for me? Why am *I* having to do it? Because it really is that simple and they have access to far more land, far better kit. But, no, I'm still paying inflated grid prices from when Ukraine was first invaded because of the price of GAS. What the fuck are we doing?

    So now, more than ever, I plan to be utility-independent by retirement, which is 20 years away, and whereas before I was wondering if that was even viable in that timeframe, I'm now expecting that to be 100% done way ahead of schedule, just by a factor of "whenever I can be bothered". It was that easy, and doing the maths was that easy.

    I might retain a grid connection, or not. It depends on what happens and what kind of low-usage tarrifs I can get in the future but I'm looking at the whole thing thinking "Fuck you, I'll do it myself" because even as an amateur... it's perfectly viable to do so. I don't care if it even costs me more (it won't). I don't care about having a grid connection or not. It's just that I will be able to be *independent* of it. When they play games, raise prices, or have power cuts, I won't be reliant on it at all. I'll use it when it's to my benefit, and not other times.

    But all I ever think about the whole thing is: How have I,

    • Screw the mod points. You deserve national recognition, for both practicality and actually doing the math.

    • So, if I want a computer to stay on... I already need to spend money and do it myself because they simply can't do it. 1% may not sound a lot, but that's 3.65 days a year if you think about it.

      Holy shit! 3.65 days a year is atrocious. Our electricity meters tracks outage numbers and duration on a per phase basis. My own number is 1h 32minutes over the life of the meter. That's 5.1 minutes per year average for a meter that was installed in 2008, and a significant portion of that came from a 45min outage 3 weeks ago.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by gweihir ( 88907 )

      Until recently, in most circumstances, this was an extremist move that made no sense. Modern battery tech and solar has changed that. Incidentally, LiFePo4 is not the battery tech for this, Lithium Iron Phosphate (LFP) is probably the best choice at this time.

      • Dude... any thoughts where the L-F-P comes from? LiFe are the first two letters, and Phosphate is PO4.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by kackle ( 910159 )
      If you live in a wooded area with power lines above ground like I do, then these outages are commonplace. And related maintenance is also done when the weather is great when one wouldn't expect a failure.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by BranMan ( 29917 )

      Kudos Ledow! Nice! Just one piece of advice though - if you are thinking seriously about disconnecting from the Grid, please look into all the ramifications thoroughly. In many municipalities being Grid-tied is a requirement for a building to be considered "livable" - you don't want your home condemned on a technicality. And that's just one factor - there are others I'm sure I don't even know about.

      I plan to do what you've done - probably more in a one-shot than grown over years - and I'll always keep a

    • Do you have a written summary of parts, schematics, etc, so someone else can follow - or at least investigate - your approach?
    • Where do you live where that has a privatized water and sewer system? I pay my water/sewer bill to the County every month. My power bill gets paid to the electric co-op.

  • The Big Picture (Score:4, Insightful)

    by SlashbotAgent ( 6477336 ) on Thursday July 16, 2026 @06:38AM (#66241156)

    This story feels like yet another America Bad bitch-fest. But wile I won't deny that these outages do occur, the article completely fails to mention if there is any deviation from the norm.

    Q: Is this a new problem?
    A: No. Power has gone out on occasion since we first started having power.

    Q: How big is this problem really?
    A: The numbers cited in the article indicate that approximately 0.3% of U.S households are impacted by outages each month. In other words, not a big percentage.

    Q: Is this a growing problem?
    A: We don't know from the article because the article didn't investigate any year except 2026. But, a little bit of investigation shows that it is indeed a slowly increasing problem. And, this is in spite of modernization and hardening initiatives that are supposedly underway.

    Q: Is this something to be addressed?
    A: Yes. Hardening and grid resiliency needs to be increased. The most impactful method is underground lines, as against the pole suspended wires that make upi the majority of the distribution grid. But that incurs major expense and takes decades to complete. So there is not a quick fix to be had.

    Q: Is this problem due to data centers?
    A: No. This has absolutely nothing to do with data centers nor anything to do generation capacity or demand. The vast majority of outages are triggered by mother nature damaging distribution infrastructure. The grid.

    Q: Is Electrek a God awful propaganda machine that should cease to exist?
    A: Yes! Yes, it is.

  • First, let's note the referenced article IS A SALES PITCH.
    Second, electrical outages are a normal thing in a storm prone country. The "outages" aren't news, it's only meaningful if they're growing more frequent.
    The article asks plaintively "is this the new normal" without ever establishing what the old normal was.

    When taking into account the higher population and higher electrical demand per person, are large blackouts becoming more common in the US?
    Per ai: no.

    "The North American Electric Reliability Corpo

  • Maybe having cars that depend on having a wireless connection, whether it be a self driving vehicle or an EV that needs to find chargers, isn't a great idea?
  • Power outages vary each year but the overall number and length are not significantly worse than in the past. 20024 was worse than most but not much worse than 2017. When you have more infrastructure you have more damage. The number of homes built in places with potential bad weather like Florida and Texas have increased so the number of power outages go up. Not surprising at all. Here is a link to outages over the last 10 years. https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]

    • Yes when your idea of reliability doesn't extend beyond bigger number = more failures you may come to that conclusion. This is why no one should run RAID1 storage. It *DOUBLES* the failure rate.

      Now with the sarcasm done I hope you see the error in your thought. There's no reason more infrastructure should cause more power outages. Quite the opposite, more infrastructures should render your power system more resilient meaning that any individual failures (which do increase with the amount of equipment you ha

  • In case this helps someone: We had a 7(?)-day outage after a large tree took down a power pole and its transformer. I tried filling the refrigerator with pots and pans full of locally bought ice. It worked and we didn't lose any food. I realized that I had re-invented the ice box.
    • If you look in the user manual (when the manufacturers still deign to include one) it'll suggest that for fridges and places to look for dry ice for your freezers as well as amounts per unit time for each. An inverter and lawn equipment batteries can run a fridge longer than you'd expect, too.

  • Sherlock has managed to highlight the already well documented fact that the US has under-invested in its power grid. For their next trick, there will be a page-turner on the sky being blue.

    • A clear sky being blue, the current sky is gray. ;-)

      The 3AM thunderstorm did not knock out the local power, by the way.

  • This is one of those things that people do not have a frame of reference for.

    The question is not did we have a power outage every month, but did we have MORE power outages these past 6 months than we had last year during the same 6 months. Without that data, we have curiosity and mindless fear, nothing more.

    Here is the actual data the industry uses, from 2014 to 2024.: https://www.eia.gov/electricit... [eia.gov]

    While these numbers are hard to inteerupt without a graph (particularly because 2024 was a 'bad' year), th

    • I don't think it shows an increase in major events. It shows two of them, 7 years apart. I think the first was a fire in California, and the second was that frost in Texas. We need more than 10 years to see trends. We'd also need adjustment for population growth and the location of the outages. If one or two places are responsible for most of them, then it isn't a national problem.

      • You make a lot of good points.
        .
        However, two environmental disasters creating an increase may indicate an underlying cause. Many environmental scientists claim that both more fires and more frost are a result of climate change that is itself a trend that will continue.

        Adjustments for population growth is also an underlying cause, not something we should ignore.

        The idea that it is a couple of local problems rather than a national one has significant importance. Texas in particular, being a separate power gr

  • ... my local utility doesn't make me suffer through a major inclement weather event in order to experience an outage.

    Just a few extra people plugging in their Teslas is all it takes.

  • I was from New England, and I have lived here in Santa Clara County for over 20 years, so I have a unique perspective on PG&E. Here in most of California, because the weather is more mild, it might appear to make more sense to let the problem happen--because it can often be fixed at any time. However in Connecticut, if you don't want your crews restoring power in the freezing rain and snow, they have to do more inspections and more maintenance in the brief time they can.

    When I lived in Connecticut, it
  • Where I live there are many, many, large trees everywhere (80+ feet tall) and much of the ground is hilly and uneven. The power goes out once or twice a year. The worst I can think of was 3 days after a particular big storm. Most outagges last a couple hours to half a day.

    There are basically two ways to fix the issue. Burying the lines or widening the power corridors to keep the trees far from the power lines. Both would require chopping down thousands of 100-300 year old trees. No one here wants that.

  • I feel like it's not only possible, but likely America saw relatively major power outages at close to the same "one per month" rate in the past too? The electrical grid is basically designed with an assumption it only stays up with the help of a crew of linemen who get tasked with locating points of failure and fixing them ASAP.

    I remember some years back, I lived in a small city right on the edge of the Potomac River in western Maryland. They were originally set up with "feeder" power lines coming from two

  • A lot of things are conspiring to make things worse.

    1. Demand by Data Centers
    2. Aging transmission infrastructure.
    3. Aging distribution infrastructure (2 power outages in my area so far this due to insulation failure of high voltage underground cables)
    4. Lack of grid frequency stabilization infrastructure (i.e. batteries and hydro)
    5. Lack of frequency and phase synchronization and interconnection of all 3 power islands in the United States (This is especially acute in Texas which does not interconnect to ei

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